Manage your subscription

AFRC 'turns a corner'

2 December 1989

BRITAIN’S Agricultural and Food Research Council has almost completed
a decade of restructuring and can now look forward to a more prosperous
future, Bill Stewart, the secretary of the AFRC, said last week. ‘If the
council gets a good (budgetary) award this year, we’ll have turned the corner,’
said Stewart, who was launching the council’s annual report.

‘I’m modestly optimistic that we’ll get a good award when the budgets
(for the research councils) are announced in about three weeks,’ he said.
The government awarded a higher budget to the science community than expected
this year, so all four councils are now hoping for higher shares than usual
(This Week, last issue).

Stewart said that the council has almost ‘balanced its books’. It has
managed to offset a sharp decrease over the past five years in the revenue
from research commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food by winning more contracts to work on research projects for industry.